Friends With Benefits

Author(s): KD, Alex Zhang, Lindsay Howard, CJ Webber + FWB Community

Abstract

The goal of this proposal is to introduce a series of core adjustments to our Discord to help new and existing members connect, contribute, and get to know each other better by improving its accessibility and transparency.

Discord has been our home base since day one, and has been where FWB members from around the world can connect and come together as a community. As we’ve grown, so have the complexities of how we interact with each other in the chat, and this Season, we want to make significant improvements to how the Discord is organized and facilitated.

Motivation

We’ve heard from community members that FWB’s Discord can be overwhelming — especially for newcomers — which ultimately discourages people from participating in discussions, supporting initiatives, and finding ways to get involved. Even existing members often don’t know where to start in terms of contributing to conversations and initiatives, which can lead to stagnation or a lack of participation.

Overview

This proposal centers around three substantial improvements to the current Discord:

1. New Member Onboarding. To improve the first 30 day experience of a new FWB member by helping them ease their way into the Discord, help them identify which channels and programs they might connect with best, and ultimately ensure a stronger Member experience.

2. FWB Public Works. To create clearer ways for the community to contribute and add a level of transparency and accountability to contributor work streams, that is accessible to all approved members, both Local and Global.

3. Channel Leads. Uplevel the amount of activity, community, and benefits across key Categories in the Discord including Creative (#art, #music-industry, #photography), Learning (#daos, #taxes, #social-tokens), Trading (#defi, #degen, #trading-crypto), Lifestyle (#selfies-n-fits, #plants-and-animals, #food) and NFTs (#nft-general-chat, #alpha-alert).

Implementation

New Member Discord Onboarding

What do the first 30 minutes of a new member’s experience within the FWB Discord look like?

Instead of overwhelming new members with all of the channels, we want to productize a drip-fed approach so they have a customized entry to the community.

After acceptance and successful wallet connection, we propose the following:

New members land on the #welcome channel, which includes:

• #start-here (a high-level overview of FWB, the core team, how to get involved, a call-to-action to post in #introductions, and a link out to the FWB Knowledge Base (coming soon!))

• #rules

• #introductions

• #help

• #wallet-security

• #code-of-conduct

• #notifications

Once a new member shares a bit about themselves in #introductions, they are prompted to select one of two options:

• “Do you want us to curate some channels for you?”

• They will be guided to join three channels that have active Channel Leads, based on the interests they identified in their application process

After seven days of getting to know the community through these curated channels, they will then have access to the entire Discord

• “Do you want access to the entire Discord?”

• The full server opens up immediately

Soon after posting their introduction, new members will receive a reply in the #introductions channel from a Membership Co-Pilot focused on introducing them to other members with similar interests, making them aware of projects, and suggesting other ways to get involved.

We’ll also open up #fwb-general-chat to all members and archive the current #fwb-town-square to create a space where all members can participate in conversation.

FWB-Public-Works

Now that we have 30+ contributors collaborating across a dozen different work streams, more visibility is needed into our progress, decision making, and roadmaps. Active and appropriate contributor-led projects will move into a public work stream format so community members can find roles and opportunities, participate in discussions, and have a better sense of what the DAO is prioritizing. We hope that FWB Public Works will become the new onramp for contributor activity, but the current contributor application flow will remain in place for the duration of Season 6.

With a combination of read-only and read/write channels, FWB-Public-Works will provide status updates and work-in-public streams for active FWB projects and initiatives, and be accessible to both Local and Global members.

• The read-only channels will host status updates from project leads, with all members able to submit public feedback on the updates (to be populated in #feedback channel)

• The read/write channels will host public workstreams for wider community initiatives

The channels will initially be populated by:

• Read-Only Status Updates

• our-cred

• works-in-progress

• product

• fellowships

• digital-events

• partnerships

• Read/Write Community Initiatives

• member-directory

• fwb-fest

• hop-louie

• artists-in-residence

• A #feedback channel where the core team and wider membership can engage with feedback.

Channel Leads

Channel Leads will act as designated community stewards tasked with connecting people, stirring conversation, and coming up with benefits on a channel-specific basis so everyone feels welcome in the Discord. Initially, Channel Leads will be selected by the Membership team based on past channel activity, as well as by peer and self-nomination to ensure it’s a diverse and inclusive group. Note that due to the current structure and permissions of the Discord, you will need to be a Global member to become a Channel Lead.

Channel Leads will be responsible for:

• Maintaining a lively, fun environment in their channels

• Ideating and producing 2-3 benefits and impromptu community experiences for the DAO that are relevant to those channel categories

• These could be out-of-the-box ideas, including product discounts, guest list spots, specialized digital events, gift exchanges, synchronous channel calls, etc.

• Sharing news about their channels’ members for TL;DR and other marketing efforts

• Empowered to schedule and host community-led chats on a recurring basis if they want to (like the currently ongoing social impact call, music call, etc)

The Channel Leads will maintain communication with each other to share best practices, and meet on a monthly basis with the Membership team. They will be compensated through a combination of OurCred and 20 $FWB tokens per month.

Outcomes & Success Metrics

As we implement this plan, we’ll track how many new members go through the entire onboarding flow (and where they get stuck), engagement on the server, and also increased diversity — which means more voices in more channels, and more members involved with more projects. We’ll also engage directly with members via feedback sessions to gauge how the changes are impacting member activity in the server.

We’ll provide seasonal updates to the community with qualitative and quantitative progress on these goals, and will conclude Season 6 with findings and recommendations from the outcomes of this proposal.

Budget

Membership Co-Pilots (responsible for new member #introductions in the Discord) and Channel Leads (heading up their respective “neighborhood” channel categories) are an important part of this proposal, and will require treasury budget allocation.

• 5 Co-Pilots x 5 $FWB x 3 months (one season)

• 75 $FWB (at time of proposal equal to approx $3400 USD)

• 10-15 Channel Leads x 20 $FWB x 3 months (one season)

• 600-900 $FWB (at time of proposal equal to approx $28K-$40K USD)

SEASON TOTAL: 675-975 $FWB (or $31K-$43K USD)

During Season 6, OurCred will be expanded to become a more robust contributor compensation tool. After the initial pilot season of these programs, the intention is to shift these fixed amounts to an appropriately weighted OurCred compensation payout.

Timeline

If the vote is successful, these improvements will be implemented immediately.